The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam | Page 4

the danger of Greatness, the instability of
Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men, recommending us to be too intimate
with none. Attar makes Nizam-ulMulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub.
xxviii.], "When Nizam-ul-Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, 'Oh God! I am
passing away in the hand of the wind.'"
"Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but not to ask for title or
office. 'The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he said, 'is to let me live in a corner
under the shadow of your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for
your long life and prosperity.' The Vizier tells us, that when he found Omar was really
sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted him a yearly pension of 1200
mithkals of gold from the treasury of Naishapur.
"At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, 'busied,' adds the Vizier, 'in winning
knowledge of every kind, and especially in Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very
high pre-eminence. Under the Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained
great praise for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon him.'
"When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one of the eight
learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali era (so called from Jalal-ud-din,
one of the king's names)--'a computation of time,' says Gibbon, 'which surpasses the
Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.' He is also the author of some

astronomical tables, entitled 'Ziji-Malikshahi,' and the French have lately republished and
translated an Arabic Treatise of his on Algebra.
"His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and he is said to
have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised
him to independence. Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from their
occupations; thus we have Attar, 'a druggist,' Assar, 'an oil presser,' etc.<2> Omar himself
alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines:--
"'Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been
suddenly burned;
The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,
And the broker
of Hope has sold him for nothing!'
<2>Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, etc., may simply retain
the Surname of an hereditary calling.
"We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates to the close; it is
told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes prefixed to his poems; it has been
printed in the Persian in the Appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p. 499; and
D'Herbelot alludes to it in his Bibliotheque, under Khiam.<3>--
"'It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of the Wise, Omar Khayyam,
died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira, 517 (A.D. 1123); in science he was
unrivaled,--the very paragon of his age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of
his pupils, relates the following story: "I often used to hold conversations with my teacher,
Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me, 'My tomb shall be in a spot
where the north wind may scatter roses over it.' I wondered at the words he spake, but I
knew that his were no idle words.<4> Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I
went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden, and trees laden with
fruit stretched their boughs over the garden wall, and dropped their flowers upon his
tomb, so that the stone was hidden under them."'"
<3>"Philosophe Musulman qui a vecu en Odeur de Saintete dans sa Religion, vers la Fin
du premier et le Commencement du second Siecle," no part of which, except the
"Philosophe," can apply to our Khayyam.
<4>The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot, consisted in being so opposed
to those in the Koran: "No Man knows where he shall die."--This story of Omar reminds
me of another so naturally--and when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the
noble sailor aimed--so pathetically told by Captain Cook--not by Doctor Hawkworth--in
his Second Voyage (i. 374). When leaving Ulietea, "Oreo's last request was for me to
return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai
(burying-place). As strange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him
'Stepney'; the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times
over till they could pronounce it; and then 'Stepney Marai no Toote' was echoed through
an hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to